Doing this whole balance thing is tricky. It’s taking some serious effort to reroute my brain. I guess it’s like when a song gets stuck in your head and you catch yourself singing it even when you’re not aware of it. The Anxiety Demon does a similar thing. He gets in there and leaves well worn tracks in your brain and the next thing you know, it’s easier and easier for your mind to automatically go back over and over. Even when you are having a good day or something funny happens, he can pop back in there and zing you in a moment’s notice. And that flat-out sucks. Like, give me a break already.
I guess part of my current dilemma is walking the line between optimism and pessimism. How do you balance hopefulness with realistic expectations? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Some people who dream of making it big in Hollywood actually do whereas many people who have those dreams don’t. I don’t want to give up on humanity. I don’t want to give up hope that the pool of decent people from which to draw friends and potential romantic interests has dwindled down so small that I may as well not even bother. Perhaps that is more the meat of my question: where is the line between “I can dust myself off and do this one more time” and “fuck it.” Even that dichotomy is put into all-or-nothing thinking though. The truth is that it doesn’t have to be the one or the other. It doesn’t have to be full-blown naiveté or full-blown cynicism. But finding the line between those two things is proving tougher than I imagined, which is probably why I have delayed doing it for so long. When you’ve been knocked in the dust several times, it takes something out of you. I don’t know how else to say it. That’s why I love that part in Rocky IV when he says, “Going in one more round when you don't think you can - that's what makes all the difference in your life.” It’s very true. Or when he says it’s not about how many punches you throw but rather how many times you can get hit and keep getting up again. The good news is that when your previous choices have been terrible, the only way to go is up. LOL. Kinda like hitting rock bottom. The bad news is that you have some scars and bruises that you carry with you and they make you very skittish. Pain sucks. You want to avoid it, not experience more of it. I have ironed out better boundaries and a firmer list of deal-breakers. Hindsight is 20/20 and when you think about relationships that ended badly, you can usually identify warning signs from early on when you do the mental autopsy of it later. At the time, though, it can be awfully difficult to take off the rose-colored glasses and give someone the boot when you want it to work.
The reason why this is on my mind is because I have a friend who has dropped a few hints about a set-up. I’m torn on this. For one reason, my last relationship was the product of a set-up. For another, you don’t really know as a woman what the dude’s genuine interest level is if he’s approaching you as a set-up and not of his own volition. And sometimes people oversell their friends. I have a couple of friends who, God love them, always tell me how amazing their other friends are. Everyone is a rock star, everyone is super cool, bomb dot com. Then you meet them and they are just hot mess train-wrecks. So I’m skeptical and understandably jaded about the whole thing. This may never happen and if it doesn’t, I’m not going to probe. I will assume it was not meant to be and forget it. If it does, I will keep an open mind but proceed with caution. Honestly, the whole thing makes me scratch my head and wonder how, when and why it all got so complicated. Seems like if you didn’t meet a marriage partner in high school or college, you missed the boat and you are now royally fucked as an adult. And if you are going to put any qualifiers on that like the guy doesn’t need to have 10 divorces or a truckload of baby mama drama, you may as well pass yourself through the eye of a needle. *Rolls eyes* We’ll see if anything comes of this. Life is too good to saddle up with a creepazoid. I haven’t always felt that way but I do now.
